Four teams of students from the Cheriton School of Computer Science and the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization, each with a triad of exceptional coders, competed on Saturday, February 25 at the 2022 East Central North America Regional International Collegiate Programming Contest.
Team Waterloo Black, consisting of Kevin Wan (4A CS/C&O), Andrew Qi Tang (3B CS) and Ramazan Rakhmatullin (MMath C&O), came in second, solving 10 of 12 algorithmic coding problems.
Team Waterloo Gold, consisting of Andrew Dong (2B CS), Kevin Yang (1B CS) and Max Jiang (1B CS), came in third, solving 10 of 12 algorithmic coding problems.
Team Waterloo Red, consisting of Eric Pei (2B CS), Allen Pei (1B CS) and Moses Xu (2B CS), came in sixth, solving 10 of 12 algorithmic coding problems.
Team Waterloo White, consisting of Mehrdad Sohrabi (1B CS), Mengyu Yuan (4B CS) and Arayi Khalatyan (1B CS), came in fifteenth, solving 8 of 12 algorithmic coding problems.
In total, 269 coders from 92 teams from more than 30 universities across the east central region of North America of participated in the gruelling programming competition.
2022 East Central North America Regional ICPC • Top 15 teams
Green indicates the team solved the problem. Red indicates that the problem was attempted. Teams are ranked by the number of solved problems, breaking ties by penalty (sum of time + 20 minutes per wrong submission, for all solved problems). Time is rounded to minutes.
Waterloo’s teams are coached by Cheriton School of Computer Science Professors Ondřej Lhoták and Troy Vasiga, with technical assistance from Information Technology Specialists Edward Chrzanowski and Devon Merner. Teams are sponsored by Jane Street, an international firm that trades a wide range of financial products.
“Our four Waterloo teams again showed their excellent teamwork and problem-solving skills, and represented themselves and the university very well,” Professor Vasiga said. “The finish was interesting, in that one of the problems had some test data issues, and the final results caused Waterloo Black to leapfrog Waterloo Gold. With the finish of Waterloo Black in second place overall, they will qualify for the North American Championships, held in Orlando in late May. Ondřej and I are proud of how all 12 students interacted with each other and the coaches, and know that all of them will continue to have success in future computing competitions.”
About the International Collegiate Programming Contest
The ICPC is the oldest, largest and most prestigious university-level algorithmic programming contest in the world. Each year, more than 50,000 students from more than 3,000 universities across 111 countries compete in more than 400 on-site competitions to earn a spot at the World Finals. Volunteer coaches prepare their teams with intense training and instruction in algorithms, programming and teamwork strategy.
Huddled around a single computer, teams of three attempt to solve about a dozen complex real-world problems within a gruelling five-hour deadline. Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds and build software systems to solve the problems.
Each year, the ICPC regionals begin at local competitions among classmates to determine who will represent their university. Success at one level leads to an invitation to the next. Each region progresses differently, but the result is the same — the best teams advance. The final regional contest determines the teams advancing to the World Finals.
Waterloo at the International Collegiate Programming Contests
The University of Waterloo is the only Canadian university to win the International Collegiate Programming Competition World Finals, taking the prized title in 1994 and again in 1999.
Most recently, Waterloo’s trio of programmers, consisting of Wesley Leung, Jason Yuen and Ildar Gainullin, were the top team from a Canadian university and 17th overall globally at the 45th International Collegiate Programming Contest.